Positive, negative life-event expectations and psychological profiles

Positive thinking is associated with better mental health and more promising recovery from illness.. The objective of the current research was to test the hypotheses that individuals with predominantly positive life-event expectations exhibit superior psychological profile when compared to people with a primarily negative outlook on life events. A sample of volunteers (n=253) comprised mainly of women (79.5%) evaluated five life-scenarios having either positive or negative outcome and completed questionnaires assessing wellbeing, optimism, pessimism, satisfaction with life and emotional intelligence. Based on the number of positive/negative responses, participants were grouped into positive and negative life-event expectancy groups. The groups were compared on the psychological measures using multivariate statistical tests.People with positive expectations reported statistically significantly greater well-being, optimism, and emotional intelligence, and lesser pessimism than those with primarily negative expectations. When the tests were repeated with a sub-sample having only 1/5 positive or negative responses, the results emerged to be even stronger. While optimism was positively correlated with positive expectations, the shared variance was only 13.4%. Positive expectation is related, but it is not identical to optimism. The more positive life-event expectations are associated with superior psychosocial profiles compared to the predominantly negative expectations.

积极思维与更佳心理健康状态及更理想的疾病康复结局密切相关。本研究旨在验证如下假设：相较于对生活事件持消极预判的个体，以积极生活事件预判为主导的个体，其心理特征表现更优异。本研究共招募253名志愿者作为研究样本，其中女性占比79.5%；参与者需评估5种分别具备正向或负向结果的生活情境，并完成用于评估幸福感、乐观性、悲观性、生活满意度及情绪智力的问卷。基于正向与负向预判的作答数量，参与者被划分为积极生活事件预判组与消极生活事件预判组；随后采用多变量统计检验方法，对比两组的心理测评指标差异。统计结果显示，相较于以消极预判为主的群体，持有积极预判的个体报告的幸福感、乐观性与情绪智力水平显著更高，悲观性水平则显著更低。当仅选取作答倾向极端（仅1/5的预判为正向或负向）的子样本重复实验时，上述结果的显著性进一步提升。尽管乐观性与积极生活事件预判呈正相关，但其共同变异量仅为13.4%，可见积极预判虽与乐观性相关，但二者并不等同。综上，相较于以消极预判为主的群体，更高程度的积极生活事件预判与更优异的社会心理特征存在关联。